John J. Daly, Jr.

John Daly is a multiple award-winning, internationally-renowned event designer and producer dubbed the “Guru of Event Design” by Special Events magazine some 28 years ago. He didn’t get the title just because of his creative talent, but because of the thousands of peers that he taught and with whom he shared all his secrets. His name alone at events conventions packs a ballroom. According to Carol McKibben, founding publisher of Special Events magazine, "When he teaches, other professionals just want to sit at his feet and hang on his every word. He embodies innovation and creativity."

            Over the years, John has worked with Hollywood's elite and created event designs for U.S. Presidents, the State Department, the Smithsonian Institute and Pope John Paul II. Most of the Top 50 Fortune 100 companies have been John's on-going clients for many years, and he and his company, John Daly Inc. International, traveled the world, designing and implementing creative, cutting-edge temporary environments for a variety of events. In addition to his design background, John ran six different companies simultaneously and hired and managed hundreds of people.

            But today, John Daly is changing the lives of others. This second journey in his life began when he was a young adult and was fascinated with the protocol and etiquette of countries around the world and how they affected the events he was producing. This led to his researching etiquette in both the U.S. and other countries to which he traveled. He wanted to know why businesspeople followed specific social behaviors and credits his later business success working with international governments and corporations to his research.

His hobby of learning about the proper rules of etiquette led to him advising his clients on both a domestic and international basis. It didn’t involve just which fork to use at an important dinner but how to dress, greet foreign dignitaries and carry on polite business conversations.  And, the more he traveled, the more he honed his skills, evolving his hobby into an expertise. At the same time, he became a Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) and began mentoring teens. Realizing that these young people had never been taught manners or how to even go about getting a job, John decided to use his outstanding teaching abilities and began to put together a curriculum to instruct students on how to not just do the things that are expected in everyday life, but to teach them the necessary interviewing tools to successfully secure a job or college entrance.

John Daly’s Key Class program was launched by partnering with the Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse’s Teen Court in Santa Barbara. This amazing program allows youth who have committed a first-time misdemeanor offense to avoid a criminal record and a chance to re-evaluate where their life is headed while still being held accountable for their actions.

From there, it was just a matter of time before John expanded to high school students as well as working with at-risk teens. Collaborating with Santa Barbara Partners in Education, John has taken The Key Class into the Santa Barbara County School System.